Time/Theories

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Theories about Time

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Stated as questions or possibilities (avoid question marks, "Maybe", "I think", etc). More appropriate for another article. Illogical or previously disproven. Proven by canon source, and moved to main article. Speculative and lacking any evidence to support arguments. Responding to another theory (use discussion page instead). This does not include responses that can stand alone as its own theory. Usage of an indented bullet does not imply the statement is a response. See the Lostpedia theory policy for more details.

• Time moves more slowly on the Island than in the outside world. There are strong hints to this effect in "Not in Portland", and further evidence in "The Economist".
  • "Mittelos" is an anagram for "Lost Time" (or "Time Lost")
  • Aldo is reading Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time
  • The Miami skyline is missing American Airlines Arena, constructed 1998-2000, suggesting Juliet's relocation to the Island has been longer than her perception of it (three years and a few months)
    • Juliet is not surprised when shown a newspaper dated September 22, 2004 in "One of Us" on the same day Oceanic 815 crashed. Her lack of surprise suggests either that there is no time dilation, or that she is already aware of it.
      • Or, she is unaware, as are the plane crash survivors, that the island exists on a different timeline.
  • Kelvin does not appear to have aged between the time we see him in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the time we see him in "Live Together, Die Alone".
  • In "The Economist" Daniel Faraday compares the time on a digital clock from the rocket with the one from the tripod and sees that they are different. The rocket's 30 second journey takes around 30 minutes to arrive on the island. This suggests that Time is moving 60 times slower on the island than in the outside world. This means that 6 days on the island equates to 1 year of 'real' time.
    • The Losties have been on the island for 100 days at this point, which equates to 17 years in the outside world.
      • If this is true then Michael's mother's claims that he's been missing for 2 months would mean that he would have been on the island for about a day! Also, in Ji Yeon, Sun states that "Sayid and Desmond have not come back after 3 days", which would equate to 6 months, yet when Daniel talks to Desmond in the Constant, there appears to be little or no mention of any time difference.

• The island exists on a different timeline than the rest of the world. Moving off-island creates a warp which causes anomalies such as the order of events changing and the time difference in the payload reaching the island from the Kahana. This warp does not equate to "slower" or "faster" time on the island as day and night comes to the island in 24 hour increments. It simply means that through season four the island's calendar was a bit off from the rest of the world. Going forward, Ben may have dramatically shifted the island's timeline when he moved the wheel. He did not just physically relocate the island, he also moved its timeline. If he dramatically moved the timeline of the island back in time, we may be able to see the answers to many mysteries in "real island time" rather than flashback:
  • the origins of the Dharma Initiative
  • why the four-toed statue was created
  • Rousseau's arrival on the island and the fate of her colleagues
  • Alex's birth and kidnapping
  • events leading up to the Purge
  • explanations for the many "dead" people walking the island such as Christian Shepard and Emily Linus
  • Charlotte's birth on the island
  • the identities of Adam and Eve

Alternatively, if Ben moved the timeline forward a few years, the island would have caught up timewise to the Oceanic Six to facilitate their return. Or if Ben moved it back in time, someone will have to bring it forward to 2009 for the Six to return.

• When Desmond turned the fail safe key, the event pushed Desmond through a black hole into an alternate past universe, and hence his "flashback" in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" did not take place in the "real" past (from the JoshMeister's LOST Blog and Podcast)
  • There was an Easter egg about black holes in the previous episode, "Not in Portland", wherein Aldo was reading pages in A Brief History of Time discussing black holes
  • An expert on time travel theory states that it is impossible to change the past because traveling backward in time will place the traveler in an alternate universe.
    • Which expert? Very few scientists believe in such a multiversal cosmology. Charlie only met Desmond briefly and Desmond was acting crazy; it is easy to see why he wouldn't remember him.
  • This explains why Charlie doesn't remember Desmond from the confrontation they had in the "past."
  • In an alternave past universe the blood on the ceiling in the swan is not from Radzinsky but from Desmond; Locke did not stop him from shooting himself. In an alternate past universe Jack and Kate die on the island in the caves; they are the bodies of "Adam and Eve" the survivors discovers in season 1.

• Swan was a time machine.

The original purpose of the Swan was to see if time travel was possible. When the blast doors were lowered, control releases of energy would cause the Swan to visit timepoints. Nobody was allowed to go out, and they were closely watched by the people in the Pearl station to see if there were any adverse effects. The experiments were a disaster because someone used the console to communicate to the outside world. The project was shut down and a new orientation movie made telling them to periodically release the energy and not to communicate with the outside world.

• The research into time travel was linked to the Life Extension Project. DHARMA Initiative was testing the Twin paradox

• The Island is held in a time bubble by magnetic fields (and perhaps other forces). After the failed moment by Desmond to set the code in, it allowed the Island to come in contact with normal space-time, allowing the plane to crash in the otherwise hidden island. This would also explain the magnetic anomaly encoutered by the two portuguese men working for Penny and the wire which gives the energy source for the time bubble.

• The Island being in a time bubble explains why Desmond and eventually Mike, Sawyer and Jin couldn't escape the Island. They were just going forward and appearing in the rear (going in circles). This is explained in Stephen Hawkins "Brief History of Time" (see wormholes)
  • Michael and Walt will come back because the orientation Ben gave them will lead them back to the island.

• The amount of time passed between when Regina fired off the rocket and when it arrived on the island was approximately 31 minutes. This may be a time difference of 31 minutes just at the particular time that Daniel ran the experiment - for example, had he run his beacon/rocket experiment hours later or that evening (after almost 24 hours of being on the island) he may have discovered that it had taken more time than just 31 minutes for the payload to reach the island. It may have taken 41 minutes, 51 minutes or over an hour. It may be that the amount of time lost between those on the 'outside' and those on the island grows bigger and bigger the longer one stays on the island and does not return 'the way that they came in'. This may be why he appeared worried and said it was 'not good' when he compared the digital timers - he suspects that this gap in time between the freighter and his colleagues on the island will only continue to get larger the longer they stay on the island completing their objective(s). Assuming this to be correct, then it may also be the reasoning behind his advice to Lapidus to stay as close as possible to the same course that they flew in on - doing so would limit the extent of 'lost time' between the point that they entered the island and that of the 'outside'.
  • Following this line of thought, Ben telling Michael to leave on heading '325' could mean that he revealed the heading that Flight 815 came into 'island space-time' on during September 22nd 2004.
  • Or knowing Ben, he deliberately sent Michael out on the wrong heading, so that he might return to the 'outside' completely out of sync with the amount of time that had passed on the island at that point.

• It seems undeniable, that time on the island DOES in fact move differently than the "real world" time - nevertheless, the calendar on the Kahana still shows the date being the 24th of December, 2004. Faraday and Desmond on the Freighter are able to communicate without any time delay but Des is (from the Island point of view) gone far longer than he himself experienced.

A possible explanation for this, and several other LOST mysteries is the following: The island exists in its own time, making the outside world in return accessible in any point in time there is, depending on the specific bearing one does take. This makes the island more or less a sort of time machine or portal. That is why Lapidus had to take the exact bearing Faraday gave him: If he would have taken another course, he would still have reached the outside world, but in another time (and the Kahana would have probably not been there.) When Lapidus got slightly of course, he bounced forward in time for about one day. That's also why Desmond, having been confronted with high amounts of radiation during the failsave incident, became unstuck in time: It's not only because of the radiation, but because he "left" his own time (even if only for some hours into the future).

• • The radio equipment works as a sort of direct connection between island-time and outside world, taking all bearings at once - the Kahana radio communication went on a restricted frequency. The signal could have been heard in any other time, but Kahana and island were actually the only two spots in any time who used the specific frequency of the conversation.
  • This "island = time portal" theory also explains why Ben always seems to know what is going to happen: He is able to look into the future through contact with the outside world in another time period.
  • Might also be an explanation for why the Black Rock seems in a very good shape for a stranded 18th century ship: In island time, it hasn't been there for a long time, but merely a few years or something like that. The original hostiles might even be the former crew of that ship, who knows.
  • This will, in a future episode, also explain the obvious growth of Walt ("astral projection" [which seems to be one of Walt's powers) from a future point in time).
• The time portal in The Orchid exploded/overloaded/malfunctioned and sent the whole island back in time, thus creating a time loop. This was The Incident. Once the island reaches the date of the incident again, the island will be sent back in time. Again. Adam and eve are the skeleton of Losties. But something may happen differently for every time. Like Christian Shephard being alive on the island. The whispers are the voices of people who have lived on the island during the time loop, things they have said at that exact time. “Visions” of people on the island, like the one Jack had of Christian, are really two people from different “goes” meeting.

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